![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
impyI believe at some point we were supposed to chat about books, right? And then I kind of shoved that aside for literal shiny things.
I had a whole ramble ready to go in my head about the last two books I dusted off my TBR pile and actually tackled but time has kind of faded them or maybe I'm just still not quite sure how to articulate my issues with both books.
I did find this review of When We Were Magic and it pretty much nails my issues with the books in a much better way than I could possibly articulate. If you don't feel like reading it, I'll attempt to sum up my feelings here.
When We Were Magic opens with our main character Alexis and her assuring us that she did not mean to kill Josh Harper. And within the first few pages you find out that in the midst of a hookup that Josh was perfectly fine to walk away from because Alexis did not seem into it (she wasn't, she was using Josh to make her BFF Roya jealous), Alexis somehow used her magic to detonate his dick like dynamite. The resulting explosion killed the boy and got blood everrrrrrrrywhere. Annnnnnnnd here's where I think literally every review that tries to claim it's "darkly funny" gets that claim.
The opening is memorable. It definitely gets your attention. Unfortunately Josh's death is what's wrong with the book. Alexis summons her friends, who are also magic, to help her clean up the mess, and while she thinks she's asking them to help her bring him back, the leader, Iris, is more into literally cleaning up the mess. So instead of trying to bring him back, Iris tries to clean up the mess and things go haywire. The body kinda disappears except for pieces of Josh, which the girls eventually put into bags and cart out of his room with them. No one at this prom party notices six people walking out with bags? Really?
Anyway. The rest of the book wants to wax poetic about the friendships and magic and getting Alexis to realize she's absolutely more than enough, just as she is, and that her friends love her for who she is. While also setting this story against the backdrop of covering up the accidental death (manslaughter? murder?) of a boy who didn't do anything to deserve to die. I think the author wanted Josh to be innocent because sometimes accidents happen to good or even okay people and that just sucks. But in order to make Alexis and her friends not seem like kind of terrible people (Alexis most of all), the story would work better if Josh had turned out to be a jackass. Alexis might be in shock for the entirety of the book and it might explain why it's so hard to connect with her. But she also seems way more upset about her crush not seeming to realize that hey, this could be True Love than the dude whose body parts she has to deal with.
The bonds of friendship and learning that your friends see you the way you see them (and quite possibly don't see themselves the way you do) is an important thing to read about. But it just feels weirdly timed to do it against a murdery backdrop.
There's a few moments where Iris seems like perhaps she's going to the dark side (not that we're told there's a dark side) and yet that literally never pays off so... eh.
I guess ultimately it's a case of characters who deserved a better framing device for the story? The murder/death really doesn't really fit the story as is written.
And prior to that I read All Eyes On Her which is about a girl who goes hiking with her boyfriend and hours later she returns home but he does not. Eventually she's accused of murder and the story is told from the viewpoints of a few people, but only our murder suspect at the very, very end. All our narrators are at least a little unreliable, not necessarily including the press coverage included. Most also have pieces to the puzzle and it's up to you to fit them together and figure out whether Tabby is guilty of anything more than bad luck.
I've read books with changing POV before and even some that do this same trick (Big Little Lies did a similar version) and it's always a crapshoot on whether or not it gives me a headache. This one did, but it also worked due to the puzzle piece aspect.
So if you clicked that we really are just jumping right to the end and spoiling this so...
s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
a
h
o
y
!
I didn't realize until ten minutes ago that people read this book and did not come to the assumption that Tabby killed Mark. Literally just read a review that lay all the blame on Keegan, Mark's douche bro best friend. I could understand if one thought Keegan and Tabby were in cahoots but not him doing everything. Tabby's the one up on the cliff with Mark. She's the one seen putting rocks in a picnic basket (or the backpack? Both apparently had rocks) and the one who left their lunch at her house but still took said basket. There's no reason to bury the Gatorade bottle if you're Keegan because nothing we learned about Mark would make it seem like he wouldn't share a drink with his best friend. But if you're Tabby and you want that shit found later, you bury it til you can get someone else to "find" it. Bridget realizes that Tabby knew the woods better than anyone knew and had been borrowing Bridget's shoes to do this exploration. Tabby admits in her own chapters that she wants to be a best selling author by the time she's 20 and writing a tell all about how she got away with fucking murder will do that.
I suspect that in six months I will remember nothing beyond wondering why Bridget didn't bring the shoe thing up with anyone and why the fuck Elle would want to be friends with Tabby. Also Keegan is the worst and at best he was guilty of being the dumbest person in the book. Worst case scenario, he's still pretty damn dumb getting roped into a murder plot by a girl who obviously was using him. Idiot.
s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
w
e
r
e
h
a
d
In case you were commenting and didn't want to see that.
I had a whole ramble ready to go in my head about the last two books I dusted off my TBR pile and actually tackled but time has kind of faded them or maybe I'm just still not quite sure how to articulate my issues with both books.
I did find this review of When We Were Magic and it pretty much nails my issues with the books in a much better way than I could possibly articulate. If you don't feel like reading it, I'll attempt to sum up my feelings here.
When We Were Magic opens with our main character Alexis and her assuring us that she did not mean to kill Josh Harper. And within the first few pages you find out that in the midst of a hookup that Josh was perfectly fine to walk away from because Alexis did not seem into it (she wasn't, she was using Josh to make her BFF Roya jealous), Alexis somehow used her magic to detonate his dick like dynamite. The resulting explosion killed the boy and got blood everrrrrrrrywhere. Annnnnnnnd here's where I think literally every review that tries to claim it's "darkly funny" gets that claim.
The opening is memorable. It definitely gets your attention. Unfortunately Josh's death is what's wrong with the book. Alexis summons her friends, who are also magic, to help her clean up the mess, and while she thinks she's asking them to help her bring him back, the leader, Iris, is more into literally cleaning up the mess. So instead of trying to bring him back, Iris tries to clean up the mess and things go haywire. The body kinda disappears except for pieces of Josh, which the girls eventually put into bags and cart out of his room with them. No one at this prom party notices six people walking out with bags? Really?
Anyway. The rest of the book wants to wax poetic about the friendships and magic and getting Alexis to realize she's absolutely more than enough, just as she is, and that her friends love her for who she is. While also setting this story against the backdrop of covering up the accidental death (manslaughter? murder?) of a boy who didn't do anything to deserve to die. I think the author wanted Josh to be innocent because sometimes accidents happen to good or even okay people and that just sucks. But in order to make Alexis and her friends not seem like kind of terrible people (Alexis most of all), the story would work better if Josh had turned out to be a jackass. Alexis might be in shock for the entirety of the book and it might explain why it's so hard to connect with her. But she also seems way more upset about her crush not seeming to realize that hey, this could be True Love than the dude whose body parts she has to deal with.
The bonds of friendship and learning that your friends see you the way you see them (and quite possibly don't see themselves the way you do) is an important thing to read about. But it just feels weirdly timed to do it against a murdery backdrop.
There's a few moments where Iris seems like perhaps she's going to the dark side (not that we're told there's a dark side) and yet that literally never pays off so... eh.
I guess ultimately it's a case of characters who deserved a better framing device for the story? The murder/death really doesn't really fit the story as is written.
And prior to that I read All Eyes On Her which is about a girl who goes hiking with her boyfriend and hours later she returns home but he does not. Eventually she's accused of murder and the story is told from the viewpoints of a few people, but only our murder suspect at the very, very end. All our narrators are at least a little unreliable, not necessarily including the press coverage included. Most also have pieces to the puzzle and it's up to you to fit them together and figure out whether Tabby is guilty of anything more than bad luck.
I've read books with changing POV before and even some that do this same trick (Big Little Lies did a similar version) and it's always a crapshoot on whether or not it gives me a headache. This one did, but it also worked due to the puzzle piece aspect.
So if you clicked that we really are just jumping right to the end and spoiling this so...
s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
a
h
o
y
!
I didn't realize until ten minutes ago that people read this book and did not come to the assumption that Tabby killed Mark. Literally just read a review that lay all the blame on Keegan, Mark's douche bro best friend. I could understand if one thought Keegan and Tabby were in cahoots but not him doing everything. Tabby's the one up on the cliff with Mark. She's the one seen putting rocks in a picnic basket (or the backpack? Both apparently had rocks) and the one who left their lunch at her house but still took said basket. There's no reason to bury the Gatorade bottle if you're Keegan because nothing we learned about Mark would make it seem like he wouldn't share a drink with his best friend. But if you're Tabby and you want that shit found later, you bury it til you can get someone else to "find" it. Bridget realizes that Tabby knew the woods better than anyone knew and had been borrowing Bridget's shoes to do this exploration. Tabby admits in her own chapters that she wants to be a best selling author by the time she's 20 and writing a tell all about how she got away with fucking murder will do that.
I suspect that in six months I will remember nothing beyond wondering why Bridget didn't bring the shoe thing up with anyone and why the fuck Elle would want to be friends with Tabby. Also Keegan is the worst and at best he was guilty of being the dumbest person in the book. Worst case scenario, he's still pretty damn dumb getting roped into a murder plot by a girl who obviously was using him. Idiot.
s
p
o
i
l
e
r
s
w
e
r
e
h
a
d
In case you were commenting and didn't want to see that.